


After an Empire's Fall

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Joey is in fucking shambles, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, and thats NOT a good thing, ive been told people have teared up at this so watch out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 07:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20689664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Joseph Drew was a stage animal.In hindsight, the role of the buffoon had always suited him more than that of a ruler.





	After an Empire's Fall

Joseph Drew was a stage animal.

Since the second he had fully realized his ability to think, remember and speak he’d been bound by a visceral, invincible desire to entertain. His mind was a witch’s bottomless pot where thoughts and idea were neverendingly brewed for no other purpose than to simply be showcased and enjoyed by anybody who might have come in contact with them. He was a fountain from which would spring stories of all kinds with the vivacity of puppies feeling the tender grass of a field underneath their paws for the very first time.

He would make stories to tell and stories to act out, stories to write down and stories to draw, stories to make pretend as an excercise of reality and stories to _actually make happen_. He would make characters out of thin air or even out of himself, sometimes for fun and sometimes to get out of a rock and a hard place. Yes, if there was someone who knew how to leave a sticky situation without any trace of themselves left behind, it was Joey Drew, the gap-toothed smooth-talking bastard.

But this wish of his, these brilliant thoughts scattered around his brain and creating wild hurricanes inside of it, weren’t the only thing that tormented his mind day and night.

He, perhaps even more strongly, had a need for company.

There are certain species of animals which have been found to feel loneliness to a lethal degree; sometimes, even, if they are denied a fellow pet by their side, they end up growing ill and dying.

Joey Drew was a man to admire, a man to look up to, a funny figure to laugh at and to be entertained by; maybe because of this, while he never ran out of an enthusiastic public to feed, the friends whom he desperately required to be - if not surrounded - at least shouldered by had been very few all throughout his life. His tendency to lie, conceal his emotions behind a wide grin and act over the top might have also a had a hand in this.

But still, he didn’t expect it.

Never, he would have expected it.

To be sitting at his desk, in his livingroom, staring blankly at his wall.

Alone.

The Studios had failed. Bendy had failed. The wave of resignations started slowly, and then came down on him all at once, much like it happens when one tries emptying a bottle of ketchup. In the end they were more or less as many as when they’d started it all.

And then the letter came in, and Grant stared at him in the eyes as he put it on his boss’s desk, and he looked at the accountant noticing - for the first time maybe - the eyebags and the red halo against the sclera and the graying skin, and his mouth moved without the mind making anything up and he said You Should Go To Sleep, You Look Exhausted.

Grant replied he did too. Grant replied, We All Look Exhausted.

And that was the last time he saw him. The last time he saw many of his employees, actually. Sammy, Jack, Johnny. Susie, Norman. Wally. Allison. Shawn. Dot and Buddy. Thomas, Lacie and Bertrum technically weren’t part of the Studios, but he counted them in nonetheless.

They’d all been his family, in a way. For the whole time his parents and half-sister lost touch with him and forgot he existed, they’d all been his Studio family, in a way.

And now there he was.

Alone, in the ashes of an empire of paper and ink, with a leg and a half.

He spent several days where all he could do was sit. Go through the motions that he needed to do in order to keep on living, and then sit at his desk.

For the first time in what felt like forever his mind was completely blank.

Devoid of all thoughts and ideas.

Devoid of stories.

He couldn’t get over his failing.

Who could he blame for it? Not any of his employees. They hadn’t done anything aside from listening to him as he wanted them to do. Not _them_. They’d left before it all, and he’d been the cause. Because he was sure there wouldn’t have been greener pastures, and because he couldn’t not be himself.

There appeared only one to blame.

And suddenly, an idea started forming in his dreadfully empty brain. It sprung slowly, like a flower that knows its time to bloom is at hand, but isn’t nearly worried about rushing the natural course of things. And when it did blossom, it curled its roots into the cracks of Joey’s skull, holding tightly as its petals drew scenes and scenes in the animators’ head.

So he took his pen in his hand, and he wrote.

Sammy was among the first ones. He swung the fire alarm axe down on him, perhaps with the intent to decapitate him in one go, as Wally screamed horrified, sure to be killed for the sake of some forgotten god. But the swing wasn’t as strong as it should have been and Joey gagged and attempted to scream, drowning in the taste of iron that invaded his mouth, his hands trying their hardest to repair the wound on his neck and letting go of the knife he intended to kill the janitor with. He turned just in time to see the music director swing again and throw him on the floor. It took several hits to end his agony.

The next step was being strangled by the strong, striking pale hands of Thomas; after that it was Susie fighting back the sacrifice with a needle that from hair went directly into his jugular vein. Grant punched him till he didn’t breathe anymore, Shawn threw him between the cogs and engines of the assembly line, Norman simply pushed him down a long spire of stairs in self defense. He never stood a change against Lacie, nor the piano that crushed his body in a bloody homage to the famous slapstick, with arms and legs still clawing and kicking in a bloody pool as rigor mortis set in. Not even against people who shouldn’t have had any ability to kill - Jack came to mind immediately, and then Bertrum, and Johnny, even. And when he finally ran out of people to slaughter himself through, he turned to his own characters. He brought them to life as words on a paper with the only intent to destroy their creator.

Sometimes the doorbell would ring.

Sometimes there would be knocks on the door.

Joey Drew wasn’t there for anybody.

Not for the press which would have eventually lost interest in him, not for the paparazzis trying to break in for a scoop, not for the few fans which he honestly wasn’t sure he had at this point, not even for whoever lived in his condominium and was getting worried over that artist who never went out of his house.

He wasn’t there for anybody because he wasn’t home.

He was curled up in his mind, surrounded by paper and pens and pencils, by the words he couldn’t stop writing, by the idea of his self, dead.

He became addicted to the thought of his own death.

He would never act out on any of his gruesome fantasies (didn’t have the stomach to, didn’t think it would have helped now), but he would write them all down until his hand ached and he fell unconscious on his desk, suddenly caught by a grey sleep.

It didn’t make him feel better.

It didn’t at all.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Everything had been his fault.

Maybe, if he’d died, things would have gone better.

How many knives had he stuck in his body.

How many of his bones had he crushed.

How many people had ended him.

How many times had his hubris finally caught up to him.

He had no idea and didn’t waste time counting.

He was busy writing himself murdered.

Then one evening there was a lot of knocking and a lot of ringing. Joey stopped as he was being mauled by inky jaws. The knocking and ringing continued.

It was a soft knocking and ringing.

He got up, took his crutches, and opened the door.

There was a child in a wheelchair with a large bruise across his face, sleeping soundly, and behind him, clutching the chair like his life depended on him, stood a man with eyes like a siamese cat and deep bags under them.

Malcolm looked at him.

I Need You To Keep Him For A While.

Joey opened his mouth wordlessly, only managing to shake his head.

The boy was thrust towards him as the lawyer pleaded to him, Only two weeks or so, he was begging him, I already found another place, it’s furnished, it will be quick, I just need you to give him a safe place to stay at while I move the rest from one place to another, I’ll come over to help often, please, I can’t let him stay with her, she doesn’t understand if he was born like this there’s nothing to fix and even if she wanted to fix him how did she think straining his arms and hurting him and trying to break him more would have helped, I’m begging you Joey, if I take him anywhere else Sonja will know and get him and claim he’s her property and do it all over again and I can’t let her do that, not to my son, not to him, he was already born so that the world would be more difficult for him, I can’t let this happen to him too.

He looked at Malcolm sleeping on the armchair.

He seemed so tired.

By the time morning had come and the lawyer had left, Joey had hidden his drafts away from any prying eyes. He couldn’t risk his mind being exposed to anyone at the moment. Awful things could have been thought. Awful places could have been his next home.

He was making some breakfast when Charlie called for his father.

Joey had never been able to get experience on taking care of children - he knew ways to make them laugh, get comfortably scared, wait in awe for the continuation of a story; he knew how to keep them entertained. He was rather ignorant on how to raise or properly handle children. Especially when his nephew had barely ever seen him to begin with.

So for a while they had stood, one in bed and the other just outside the room’s door with a prostethic leg, staring at each other in silence as if waiting for a clue. Charlie’s eyes were so grey and round, for a second Joey had thought he was his own son.

Don’t talk to strangers, his parents would tell him. Well, if the stranger says hello, I am your Uncle Joey, and is very kind and quiet and gentle with you after you’ve been so used to screams everyday, and answers nicely when you ask him questions, and tells you your dad will come over this evening to give you many kisses, and helps you get dressed and get on your wheelchair and brings you to the livingroom and asks you what you want for breakfast before going and making you an omelette with lots of melty cheese, then maybe, Charlie thought to himself, then maybe it is ok to talk to him.

They spoke for a while, about Charlie, about Joey. About Malcolm. Drowning horrible mothers and terrible deaths away from their minds with the kind of useful nothingness told when getting to know someone else.

And then, the kid’s eyes fell on a plush. The Bendy plush. The one on top of the shelf. Bendy had always had knack for mesmerizing children.

Joey had tried to make sure of that, after all.

And yet he’d failed.

The Studios had failed.

The cartoons had failed.

But Charlie… Charlie loved him.

From the second he laid eyes on the doll, the child had become enamored with the character. For the first time in nearly three years, an excited voice flooded Joey’s ears with questions about the little dancing demon: what did he like? How was he like? Could he whistle? Did he speak? Did he pull pranks? Did he play with kids? Did he like sweets? Did he do all sorts of crazy dances? Did he move his horns like little kitty cat ears? Did he have a pitchfork, did he have a tail, batwings, pointy teeth under the normal ones, sharp claws inside the white gloves, hooves hidden in the shoes, a big scary evil secret double, like a super mean and terrible twin brother?

Words, words, words! He let them flow out of his mouth as he almost struggled to keep his answers up to his nephew’s pace. And he looked carefully into those big grey eyes as he mentioned Boris, and Alice, and the Butcher Gang, and the stories of old forgotten cartoons - those big, grey, shining eyes, getting wider and wider with every sentence.

Stampeeding the flower of his self-deprecation with a relentless, joyful, colorful, sepia toned monochrome.

And all of a sudden, he became conscious of how he was speaking. Of the tone of his voice and the content of his speech. He was… He was _narrating_. He was verbally drawing a storyboard in the air. Of Bendy. Bendy! Like he used to do years ago! Before Henry left, before everything got hard, before his own big grey eyes stopped widening like that so often, before his life and joy and health had been sucked away by the stress and polio. Before… Before…

Before it.

For a whole day, all Joey could talk about was Bendy. Like back then.

He was… So tired, when Malcolm finally came back that evening to see his little boy. So exhausted, in fact, he could barely cook and his poor brother-in-law had to help him out, despite being incredibly fatigued as well. They leaned on each other the entire time just to make they didn’t accidentally fall face flat on the frying pan, chuckling like high schoolers on a first date. Malcolm slept over, and he did so over and over, until everything was ready.

Charlie struggled a bit when he waved his little hand at Uncle Joey as his father wheeled him away; Uncle Joey put all of his weight on his crutches while waving back at Charlie with a giant grin.

Then he got to writing. About Bendy. The gory bloom in his mind had not withered yet, and maybe it never would, but he had something else now. Something better to focus on. Something more positive. Something that reminded him of wonderful times gone by. Of back in college.

Oh!

A letter.

He was writing a letter, now.

When had he started that? He hadn’t even noticed, and there he was already nearly done with it.

He wrote more, in between Bendy stories and, sometimes, less horrendous fantasies that reemerged from the depths of his memory. He wrote about… 15 letters, give or take. He sent them slowly, three or four at a time, when he remembered to. And then, as his brain sang incessantly of little demons, sheepish wolves, lonely angels and shady butchers, he waited.

A long time, too.

Then Wally answered. The forgetful janitor remembered him. And Sammy, too, soon after! Both in Florida, they were, and living close to each other if the envelopes didn’t lie. It made Joey smile.

Jack hadn’t followed his old friend down south, he found out when the lyricist wrote him, and neither had Johnny. They preferred places where alligators didn’t climb in from the yard. Allison and Thomas were still married, just as happily as they were at their wedding day; the voice actress appeared much more enthusiastic about her old boss reaching out to her again after years of radio silence than her husband was. Shawn had opened a tailoring business with Kim not too far away (he made a mental note to go visit, sometimes). And he was just delighted to hear Buddy’s own animation studio was starting to get off the ground with some help from his partner in crime, Dot. Susie… Her twin brother informed him she was caught in a car accident. And Norman had been shot a couple months before Joey had met Charlie, as told by his daughter.

Time, the animator thought. Isn’t it… Strange.

He could still see them in the theater of his memory, the projectionit and the singer - unchanged through the decades, talking to each other, a small woman and a tall greying man. He couldn’t imagine their bodies laid inside caskets, wonderfully dressed for a final dignity. Bertrum as well, although not as difficultly: he’d been already pretty old, back then.

Neither Grant nor Lacie answered, and he didn’t blame them.

Niamh had never answered, and he couldn’t blame her.

And Henry…

Henry hadn’t answered, either.

They promised to write to each other regularly when he left the Studios. Keep up with one another’s life, how was Linda, how was Bendy, friendly chitchat. Except work had had other plans for them, taking over their schedules until there was no more time for penfriends.

What if work had stolen him?

Taken his friend away?

Permanently?

Local Artist Pushed Too Hard, Found Dead At Desk.

He couldn’t bring himself to read the article.

Henry.

His friend.

His dear friend.

His dear old friend.

Pushed Too Hard.

Found Dead At Desk.

He had a family.

He had a nephew, and a brother-in-law, and most of his Studio family.

He had lost some of them, but he still had a family.

But not Henry.

Not Henry.

Not him.

Please.

Then there was a knocking one day. A gentle, familiar knocking. Joey got up, staggering a little with his new prothesis, and looked through the peeping hole.

There was someone short and pudgy, with long hair in a ponytail, an old scar just above a stout nose and sly smile to go with half-lidden, relaxed eyes.

Joey threw himself in Henry’s arms, and they fell on the floor with a terrible rockus like two reunited brothers.


End file.
